Welcome back to the AstroJargon of the whatever-time-frame-I-feel-like series! Here I break down some commonly used terms in astronomy so that the language barrier between scientists and science lovers can be breached. Today I’d like to explain the S-Z Effect, SZE, or Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect. I’ve already touched upon this briefly over on Discovery. I wantedContinue reading “AstroJargon: “Cluster Shadows” by the S-Z Effect”
Tag Archives: astrojargon
Conference Travel: URSI Day 2
Note: I am in no way a trained cosmologist. I play with radio telescopes, galaxies, and the ionosphere. I’m a bit out of my depth, so I do apologize in advance for inaccuracies and welcome corrections! Thursday was the second day of the URSI conference in Boulder, CO. The plenary session took up the entireContinue reading “Conference Travel: URSI Day 2”
AstroJargon of the Week: Blazar
This week’s… last week’s… aw, did I miss a week? Anyway, THIS week’s “astrojargon” has a super-fun name, and it’s a pretty fun object as well. I’m talking about blazars. This is a subclass of AGN, the jargon with which I started my series. A blazar is highly variable, very luminous, and quite polarized. (PolarizationContinue reading “AstroJargon of the Week: Blazar”
AstroJargon of the Week: HI
For this week’s (late) AstroJargon, I’d like to point out a bit of jargon I used in my Ada Lovelace post the other day. I talked all about HI (the letter “H” and the Roman numeral one) studies, and before posting, I quickly inserted “neutral hydrogen” as a definition. But why is that important anyway?Continue reading “AstroJargon of the Week: HI”
AstroJargon of the Week: Parsec
This week I thought I’d scale back from such a rich topic as AGN and tell you a little bit about the parsec. (In this case, I do not mean the podcast awards!) A parsec is a measure of distance. But, you are thinking, Nicole, don’t you astronomers already use the light year as aContinue reading “AstroJargon of the Week: Parsec”
AstroJargon of the Week – AGN
Jeffrey Bennett, astronomer and author, once told us that a typical astronomy textbook has about as many vocabulary words as a typical foreign language textbook. So, in addition to teaching physical and astronomical concepts, we’re teaching a whole new language! Jargon is incredibly useful for making detailed communication within a specific field efficient and convenient,Continue reading “AstroJargon of the Week – AGN”